15. Listening to the Lived Experiences of Worshippers:
A Study of Post-Pandemic Mixed Ecology Worship

©2024 Elspeth Manders, CC BY-NC 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0403.15

The COVID-19 pandemic—which temporarily restricted in-person worship but increased access to worship services online—has indelibly changed the profile of contemporary worship in the Church of England. According to worshipping and visitor data collected in 2021 from England’s forty-two cathedrals and Westminster Abbey, 94% of cathedrals now offer online worship in addition to in-person services.1 New practices, such as online worship, require time for reflection, as the Emeritus Dean of Chelmsford indicated in a monthly newsletter,

… where crises of one kind or another appear to be threatening, there is often more pressure to come up with urgent solutions to avert catastrophe and change direction … The implications of this (the pandemic) for our theology and our ministerial practices and priorities … will be something that it will take years or generations rather than mere months to explore.2

Furthermore, worship leaders, musicians, and worshippers have different views about the purpose of worship in this new age, the faithfulness to scripture in an increasingly secular context, and the influence of online worship on religious narratives, to name just three areas of contention.

To contribute to a developing reflection on, and response to, post-pandemic worship, I conducted an empirical investigation for music in contemporary worship practice in 2023. While there have been several empirical studies exploring the status of worship following the pandemic;3 a mixed-method survey conducted by Chelmsford Cathedral in 2021 formed the basis for my own research. The 2021 study uncovered some limitations: as one participant, for example, responded—‘it is difficult to express opinions freely in this format’.⁴ Recognising that lived Christian realities are highly complex, and difficult to capture via a questionnaire, I sought to unpack lived worshipper experiences using interviews. I thus thematically analysed five interviews with lay musicians from Anglican and Catholic denominations in the Diocese of Chelmsford to understand the experiences of churchgoers. My aim was to consider how qualitative research methodology—specifically, reflexive thematic analysis—can be used to inform the planning and implementation of mixed ecology worship following the pandemic. In this chapter, I introduce the contextual frameworks, qualitative methodology, and findings of my research on post-pandemic mixed ecology worship. In doing so, I outline the scope and limitations of this study, which used a controlled, purposive sample. Throughout the chapter, I use the term ‘mixed ecology’ to refer to worship that is receptive to new ways of accessing faith, specifically, online worship.5 I use the term ‘post-pandemic’ to refer to the cultural landscape shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic (encompassing various belief systems and non-belief orientations).

I. The Post-Pandemic Landscape

Post-pandemic worship, specifically online worship, raised several theological implications for the practice of religious ritual online. Much Christian worship is based on incarnational theology, which stresses corporeality: ‘…and the Word became flesh and lived among us’ (John 1:1–14). However, online worship challenges the constitution of Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist, rendering the sacramental viability of online worship unclear. The legitimacy of online worship, specifically the extent to which it upholds orthodox Christian values, requires examination. Coming together in worship is also a central part of the Christian ethos. As theologian Andrew Louth suggests:

To be a Christian is not simply to believe something, to learn something, but to be something, to experience something. The role of the church then, is not simply as the contingent vehicle—in history—of the Christian message, but as the community, through belonging to which we come into touch with the Christian mystery.6

St Paul builds on this insight in his teaching: ‘For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another’ (Rom 12:4–8). However, online worship has changed how Christians come together by facilitating communities that worship and socialise together online.

Empirical studies show variation in how worshippers view the theological viability of online worship. Some participants in the 2021 Chelmsford Cathedral study found that online worship was not sufficient because ‘we need each other in the flesh, not just on an interactive screen. We need social contact’.7 Others, however, found online worship spiritually sustaining, based on the idea that God’s revelation can occur in any physical space: ‘we don’t have to be physically present or together for worship to be meaningful, sometimes we just have to go with it’.8 The positive outlook reflects theologies which stress that even when the sacrament is not consecrated, there is theological integrity because of Christ’s presence in the ordinary. As Simon Podmore summarises, ‘incarnational theology encompasses the notion that God is revealed in the material, the mundane, the everyday as well as in the sublime and transcendent which seems to point beyond what is immediate’.9 The suitability of online worship can therefore depend on the theological conviction of the worshipper.

Theological considerations also arose for how to implement music in online worship. Congregational song has historically been celebrated as a means of active participation with the music,10 which aligns with theological narratives that stress singing together as a theological imperative.11 In the Chelmsford Cathedral study, the important role of active participation in the music was highlighted by several participants: when asked what they missed about being part of a church community since the pandemic, they mentioned singing (see Figure 15.1). However, the parameters for active participation in music have changed by inviting online worshippers to sing online. Singing online raises further implications, therefore, for evangelism as well as for the construction of religious identity.

Fig. 15.1 Participant responses about singing.12 Created by author (2024), CC BY-NC 4.0

The rhetorical profile for music in worship has also been impacted by worshipping online, as the expectations for worship practices upheld before the pandemic change in the new post-pandemic conditions. Such expectations regard, for example, the appropriateness of style (including the desired balance between traditional styles of music and contemporary worship music),13 presentation (including the balance of sung and spoken aspects of the liturgy, and who sings them),¹⁴ and the quantity and quality of music in worship.

Whilst empirical data from questionnaires offers important insights into statistical findings, I sought to generate further insights by considering lived narratives. I chose reflexive thematic analysis (RTA)—which necessitates considering the relationship between the researcher, the research topic, and the design of the research process—as a fruitful qualitative research methodology, and I interweave a phenomenological approach throughout.

To justify qualitative research methodology as a viable research method for listening to and analysing contemporary worshipper realities, it is critical to examine the relationship between researcher and participant. There is a phenomenological dialectical relationship between participant and researcher, which, because of respective contextual milieus, impacts the validity of the data-gathering process. As Martin Heidegger underlines, ‘interpretation is never a pre-suppositionless apprehending of something to us’; individuals are ‘always already in an environing world’.15 Qualitative research methodologies therefore consider interactions between researcher and participant data, semantic literacies regarding the participant and their data (for instance, does the researcher understand the words in the same way as participant?), and attempts to understand the contextual milieu from both perspectives.¹⁶ Understanding that the researcher is the central analytic instrument and their research uncovers dual perspectives from the phenomenon and researcher is central to qualitative research. Prior to undertaking qualitative research by interviews, I therefore engaged in consistent hermeneutic reflexivity to explore critically my own assumptions from different angles. I engaged in informal presuppositional interviews, the aim of which was to leaf ‘through the language, ambiguities, contradictions, certainties and interconnections with the phenomena in questions, […] to unfurl the layers of [the researcher’s] own story […] to probe into [the researcher’s] relationship with the research and its purpose’.¹⁷ This enables the researcher ‘to move beyond [their] familiar way of Being to identify other perspectives as well as re-examine [their] well-trodden and comfortable paths of knowing’.¹⁸ Considering this, I actively engaged in conversations with colleagues and acquaintances within the Diocese of Chelmsford, inviting input regarding my research questions.

I carefully considered the location, timing, frequency, and candidates for interviews. Two participants chose to interview online. Following the suggestions of Hilary Engward et al. for conducting remote qualitative interviews, my aim was to offer a safe space which could enable communication.¹⁹ I asked colloquial questions to facilitate a natural sense of space, checked if the participant was comfortable, if they had any questions, and invited questions about the research itself. Two participants chose to interview online, for which I actively accounted in the interview process. In determining the interview questions, I followed Kathryn Roulston’s suggestion to use core and open-ended questions to provide an outline structure to steer the interview, with probing and supplementary questions used to add greater detail to the description.20 I adopted a loose framework of questions to contextualise the phenomena regarding the research question, with the aim of generating directive but not limiting prompts.

Finally, I used purposive sampling to invite five lay musicians and employees who worshipped and worked in Catholic and Anglican contexts in the Diocese of Chelmsford to participate. In limiting my sample size, my goal was to implement RTA effectively. I recognised, of course, the potential limitations of a reduced sample, which did not include young people under the age of eighteen due to ethical considerations pertaining to consent. Clergy were not invited to participate, in order to manage the quantity of narratives for analysis. Moreover, insights into spiritual experiences from the perspective of ethnicity were not accounted for in the sample. Further considerations included my position as an employee within the Diocese of Chelmsford with a background in the Christian faith tradition, and my dialogic presence with the interviewees. I also recognised that participants undertook insider roles within the Diocese as staff or organisational leaders, in addition to worshipping. These role frameworks offer specific positionalities, which must be distinguished from worshipper narratives more generally and which may have limited the findings.

Table 15.1 Participant biographies. Created by author (2024), CC BY-NC 4.0

(b) Reflexive Thematic Analysis

After the interview methodology had been systematically applied, I used RTA to interpret the findings. Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke describe RTA as ‘a theoretically flexible method’ for ‘developing, analysing and interpreting patterns across a qualitative dataset’.21 A central component of RTA is that the researcher’s position is unavoidable; the process involves ‘critically interrogating’ the researcher’s influence and explicitly bringing forth these values in analysis.²² Furthermore, Braun and Clarke suggest that RTA ‘identifies, analyses and reports patterns (themes) within data. It minimally organises and scores your data in (rich) detail. However, frequently it goes further than this, and interprets various aspects of the research topic’.²³ This approach suited a key goal of my research: namely, to listen to worshipper narratives. Thus, using RTA allowed me to form outcomes using inductive generation of subjective codes and themes, driven entirely by the data.24

The RTA approach is characterised by six steps. The first step requires familiarisation with the data, which involved detailed review of the interview transcripts. Second, the data is coded by looking for recurring words, key patterns, and emergent themes. Third, the coded data is then re-organised into these emergent themes. Fourth, the arising themes are developed and grouped according to character or meaning (such as past/present/future narratives, or conceptual ideas/opinions/experiences). Fifth, the grouped themes are further refined and developed. Table 15.2 indicates the themes and sub-themes that emerged from my research. Finally, the sixth step is to produce the report using compelling examples to illustrate the findings. In the next section, I examine the interpretations and findings which arose in accordance with this sixth step, and I have structured the participant narratives according to the key themes in Table 15.2 below.

Table 15.2 Themes and sub-themes pertaining to step five of RTA. Created by author (2024), CC BY-NC 4.0

(a) The Post-Pandemic Situation

Participants noted ideological tensions pertaining to religious ideas in the contemporary world. This included tensions regarding the relevancy of church in contemporary lifestyles, such as ‘now we’re competing against loads of stuff. In my childhood, on Sunday mornings there was church or you stayed at home’, and ‘another challenge is to make the church relevant in busy people’s lifestyles, and to show them that it’s attractive and that children are welcome’.25 Furthermore, ‘as in lots of things, people got out of the habit of going’. Ideological incongruency and change, including the de-prioritisation of worship in lifestyles because of busyness, competition with other opportunities, and lack of habit formation are aspects of the post-pandemic religious situation. Participants also acknowledged that religious, musical, and digital literacy is problematising access to the church and sacred music. This is particularly an issue for ‘children and families who have no experience or understanding of the church’ which leads to ‘anxiety about even going through the doors’. Regarding online worship access, one participant noted that it needs to be as simple to use as possible:

Participants recognised that intuitive online mechanisms are important for those who struggle to access and navigate online platforms. This is relevant given that 36.4% of the Church of England’s worshipping community, as of 2021, are over seventy.26

(b) Online Worship

Overall, participants celebrated online worship; as one participant said, ‘huge fan. I don’t see a downside’. Several commented on its cultural relevance and, particularly, its congruency with modern lifestyles. For example, one participant engaged with different styles of worship at different times of day, and globally:

I watch Morning Prayers at the Cathedral. I watch Evensong, mostly somewhere else if I see some music come up that I particularly want to listen to. I’m linked to Saint Hippo at Leytonstone, St Martin-in-the-Fields, St Thomas’s Fifth Avenue and St. James in Australia… Absolutely love it, being able to access a tradition so far away from me.

This reflects the greater dissemination of religious ideas, transcending geographical barriers. Participants also identified rhetorical and financial concerns that have emerged for musicians because of online worship. Philosophically-minded participants considered the impact of livestreaming on the ontology of worship, noting that the length of time music is shared online (and whether it is accessed in real time or after the event) affects the distinction between service and performance. One participant said: ‘once you go into something that’s permanently there, that’s not a service. It’s a performance’. Another participant noted:

If it’s something that’s going to have your name attached to it and be out on the internet forever, you could say it was a performance, and it will be paid for differently. I think that the principle of taking it down after 24/48 hours really ought to be there to protect musicians.

Several participants commented on online worship and active participation. Some liturgical devices were praised; as one participant said, ‘I thought the Church of England did cover it quite well in the sense of offerings, prayers of spiritual communion’. However, some found Eucharistic liturgies online more problematic, theologically speaking: ‘I think my problem would be a mass because you can’t make your communion. You’re not fully engaging in it, and that’s the central point of the mass’. As with previous empirical studies, there was disparity between the theological virtue of Eucharistic and non-Eucharist liturgies online. Participants also suggested that script planning—including of camera angles and microphone placements according to liturgical moments—prior to streaming can be used to ‘make you feel you are part of the service’, encouraging active participation.

In addition, participants commented on the outreach potential of online worship. This included the acknowledgement that musical offerings tended to be the most popular items shared online, with comments such as ‘music always brings in the most views and the most positive comments, and it speaks to people even online. It speaks to people who don’t have to be in the building’. However, whilst social media channels such as Facebook and YouTube are positive marketing resources for the church, participants suggested they ought to be used strategically and for specific functions. One participant found that softer church initiatives were popular, but ‘in the pandemic, Facebook became our broadcast channel, and they all switched off. They unsubscribed’. There needs to be consideration of how often worship is shared online and which platforms it is shared on, as well as how to balance sharing worship online with softer church initiatives.

(c) The Philosophy of Music in Worship

The context for worship has shifted according to societal changes, with implications for the purpose and function of music. Specifically, participants commented on the sustainability of the choral music tradition and the imperative for outreach among church music spheres. This outcome reflects recent reports demonstrating that the sacred music tradition faces a long-term sustainability crisis.27 A recurring theme was the unsustainability in contemporary practice of the traditional chorister timetable of numerous rehearsals and services a week. It was noted that the chorister timetable ‘needs to move several decades ahead. We haven’t moved as quickly as we ought to, we need to be much more flexible’. In addition, expanding demographic resources to incorporate ‘combining boys with our girls, that kind of close cooperation’, was desired. Whilst more ministries incorporate mixed gender choirs in their musical offering, a more diverse pool of resources including equal commitment for boys and girls is recommended.

Music was celebrated as a central facet of church outreach. It was noted that extra-curricular and networking opportunities are important in the chorister timetable and should ‘be much, much higher priority’. Regarding music in worship, participants noted the standard of musicianship in a cathedral as opposed to parish ministry is ‘what’s different and that’s what attracts people to a cathedral’. Participants also shared in a plea to integrate children into church music at an early age, ‘get them early, when they are seven, eight or nine, and present them with Palestrina as though this is completely normal’. However, participants also noted an incongruency between the desires of the musicians to perform and the imperative to communicate:

Whilst all participants celebrated music in worship, they disagreed on the extent to which music programming should consider its accessibility, shareability, and popularity.

Participants highlighted music’s capacity to touch on the subjective human condition as an important gateway to the church. Beautiful music is ‘fundamental to the worship, in the same way as if people can go into a church and they can be moved by looking at the stained glass or in places where they have them at the wall paintings’. It can also transcend barriers pertaining to church music literacy, because ‘the vast majority of the people in congregations probably won’t understand music in the way that a trained musician will understand it, but that doesn’t matter, because they’re being moved by that experience’. Whilst aesthetic experience is a key part of the participant feedback, it is important to acknowledge that the sample centralised musicians and, therefore, their responses to music may not be representative of worshippers in general.

(d) The Choral Musician’s Lifestyle

Choirs are a key aspect of musical life in the Church of England. Several participants focused on parameters which impact the church musician’s lifestyle and how this affects musical provision in worship. Participants acknowledged the difficulty in sustaining chorister life in the contemporary age. Singing in a choir as a young person is a commitment which includes the whole family, and demands compromise as a family unit:

It’s an extraordinary commitment, and it’s one that I’ve never played down when I’ve had a chance to talk to prospective choir parents. It is an absolute lifestyle decision and it impacts on everybody… it’s not that the chorister is put first, but all of that timetabling has to come together per family, because there are still hockey games for somebody else or rugby games.

Furthermore, participants identified a disconnect between the commitment of the children and the parents, noting many parents do not engage in the worship but ‘just drop their kid off and pick them back up again’. Parents are not fully integrated in church worship, an indication that church worship does not fulfil an ideological or spiritual function for them.

Relationship building with families, schools, and peers was regarded as an imperative for choral musicianship. Participants argued that churches must invest more time into communicating with other organisations to secure a future for church musicianship. For instance, participants celebrated building relationships with schools. Specifically, a specialised communications strategy, implemented either as a distinct role or as a facet within music leadership, should prioritise fostering relations with schools because of the positive implications for recruitment:

If you had relationships where your music staff had already contacted schools and had relationships, and were going in, for example, to support GCSE music students, or your seventh-grade music students, or going into an assembly, or to help with a summer concert, that’s how you build relationships. Other things come from that, it might be recruitment, it might not.

It was also noted that fostering relationships between chorister parents at school institutions is important to manage the practical demands of chorister life, for example, lift sharing. However, this is difficult for parents with children from isolated or individual schools who ‘found communication very, very difficult, because we went to school where nobody else attended the Cathedral’. Encouraging parents to communicate online can help to make chorister life more practically viable for families with children attending schools with fewer connections to a cathedral. One participant suggested WhatsApp groups should be used, because ‘that kind of communication that means that one person goes to a sports field and picks up four choristers makes everybody’s life so much easier’.

Belief is central to many accounts of musicianship in the church. Whilst it was recognised that belief is not necessary, having a spiritual calling helped participants when performing music underpinned by faith: ‘it is up to me to respond to that and to, to worship God through music to the best of my ability’. For those working with children’s choirs, belief was a central part of musical pedagogy. However, in some organisations, there are differing opinions between musicians and clergy regarding how often music should be used in church services. One participant said:

I would like the clergy to acknowledge, accept and welcome the place of good music in worship, and to see it as a powerful tool of evangelism, rather than seeing it as a threat. There are far too many clergy still who see music as a threat.

Musical rhetoric was also a central concern. Several participants had strong views regarding the type of music that should be used in church worship: ‘“Shine Jesus shine” makes my toes curl’. Others offered a diplomatic approach to rhetoric, endorsing rhetorical compromise in musical timetabling:

One needs to be aware that people have different likes and dislikes. So you try and programme as wide a repertoire as possible. Of course, you can’t please all the people all the time. You just have to bear in mind that not everyone is going to like what you do. But you can please some of the people some of the time, that famous adage.

Participants worshipping at the Diocesan Cathedral spoke about recent polemics regarding musical devices in liturgy, including arguable compromises on taste. Whilst it was noted that a variety of musical offerings can help worship appeal to more people, clarity on distinguishing features in services ought to be used so that ‘everybody (can) have an opportunity to hear what they like’. In this case, the participant liked ‘the idea of a service that doesn’t have a choral offering, because that clearly appealed to a congregation who wants to worship without a choir’. On the other hand, participants noted that for people ‘that are not potentially regular worshippers’, the presence of music is an incentive to worship because ‘a lot of the time they will see the music of the day and be sort of pulled along by that’. Part of the conversation regarding the implementation of music in worship therefore involves how often to include a choral offering.

Participants discussed the theological parameters associated with musical rhetoric. A congregational emphasis in the Diocesan Cathedral’s Eucharistic service on a Sunday included a ‘congregational setting that is known universally and a lot of them can sing off by heart. Also, a nice selection of hymns, a rhetorical psalm with a response line that they can sing along to in between verses’. This was noted as ‘a nice way of making sure everyone is involved’. Certainly, active participation in the music was important, reflecting the findings of the 2021 Cathedral questionnaire: ‘I like singing. I’m not great singer, but I like joining in with things. So to me, if I’ve been to a service where I’ve only stood up once and sung it doesn’t feel like worshipping’. However, whilst music can help to make worship more inclusive and accessible, it can also be divisive, because ‘the musicians sometimes obstruct in the attempt to making it outward facing, just simple things like not being prepared to take a softer version of music out there’. The choice of musical style, and specifically the balance of traditional and modern music, is directly tied to incentives regarding outreach.

Participants suggested that developing strong relationships between music and communication departments are essential to the church and to the successful implementation of strategic outreach initiatives. It was noted that all church staff, including musicians, ‘should be offering a high level of communications’. How music is programmed, and subsequently communicated in marketing and distribution, seems to be essential for integrating and retaining church worshippers in contemporary spheres.

Having examined key themes from participant narratives through the six steps of RTA, I now respond specifically to participant reactions to the question ‘what would you like to see in church worship in five years’ time?’. For a sustainable church model in this post-pandemic praxis, I suggest the development of strategies for the implementation of music in mixed ecology in four areas: (a) online worship; (b) communication; (c) rhetoric around musical styles; and (d) chorister recruitment and retention. Although I centre my own qualitative research, I acknowledge that further qualitative study is required to develop outcomes.

(a) Online Worship Strategy

Online or digital worship practice requires standardising. Specifically, strategies are required for hybrid worship including the following points:

Fig. 15.2 Online worship strategy. Created by author (2024), CC BY-NC 4.0

These ten concerns reflect the important role of online worship in worshipper narratives and show the broad scope of the task of implementation. While online worship is, it appears, a beneficial addition, there are significant limitations in terms of participation and the kind of religious experience engendered, and this is particularly relevant for Eucharistic liturgies. Furthermore, participants found the lack of clarity regarding the role of online worship in the church’s mission led to disagreements between musicians and church leaders, negatively impacting music in both in-person and online worship contexts. Regarding the further implementation of music in mixed ecology worship, empirical research teaches us that a transparent strategy is required to use each component effectively.

Developing systems of communication should include consideration of communication challenges within music departments and worship organisations. Specifically, participants would like to see the following:

Fig. 15.3 Communication strategy. Created by author (2024), CC BY-NC 4.0

Participants sought to systematise how churches and musicians communicate with each other and with external secular organisations; to enhance internal communication systems; and to foster a culture which treats communications as a central aspect of all church roles. Asynchronous technology could be useful here for collaborations across remote spheres, increasing access to information, enabling flexible timetabling, and broadening social groups.

Tensions regarding the style and quantity of music in worship were cited as issues following the pandemic. Several participants spoke about their experience of rhetorical change concerning specifically the place of worship in the Diocese of Chelmsford, citing rhetorical consistency as an issue. A strategy for development might consider the following:

Fig. 15.4 Rhetorical strategy. Created by author (2024), CC BY-NC 4.0

(d) Chorister Recruitment Strategy

The last observation from participant narratives pertains directly to the resources available to implement music in worship: church choirs and choristers. Participants stressed that the pandemic calls for a revised recruitment and retainment strategy, including:

Fig. 15.5 Chorister Strategy. Created by author (2024), CC BY-NC 4.0

The data generated from this small focus group located in the worshipping community of the Diocese of Chelmsford demonstrates that qualitative research methodology may offer important insights into the lived experiences of worshippers engaged in contemporary mixed ecology worship. The flexibility and inductive data-driven approach of RTA places lived realities at the forefront of conclusions. Examining these lived realities and experiences highlighted participants’ passion for the church and their roles within it. Acknowledging the inevitable shifts in praxis following the COVID-19 pandemic, participants recognised that the musical and spiritual realities of their worshipping life, including access to worship online, were worth sustaining and developing. Furthermore, it is essential in future ecclesial music-making to strategise music in online worship as a theological and cultural imperative. Listening to worshippers’ experiences indicates that churches have work to do to ensure the continued viability of traditional choral music-making in the post-pandemic praxis. On the basis of the data taken from interviews using RTA, I have thus suggested, in this chapter, four areas to consider in implementing mixed ecology worship following the pandemic.